parti socialiste

With expectations that surpass those of Tony Blair and Barack Obama, can Emmanuel Macron deliver the change so many believe in, asks Felicity Slater European centre-left has few reasons to be cheerful. The Dutch Labour party was hammered at the polls in March. In Germany, Angela Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union looks set to gain …

Leftwinger Benoît Hamon surprises pundits to win French Socialist candidacy, writes Felicity Slater In another surprise to the commentariat, but confirmation disloyalty is more valued than solutions on the left, Benoît Hamon has beaten outgoing prime minister Manuel Valls in the race to become the Socialist party’s candidate for the French presidency. Hamon sits on …

It has been a good week for François Hollande. On the weekend, a ‘historic’ deal was reached at the Paris climate summit, which earned French diplomacy a lot of praise. On Sunday evening, the final outcome of the French regional elections were much better than expected, with five wins out of 13 new ‘big’ regions, …

Yesterday the run-off of the French municipal elections ended with the worst possible scenario for François Hollande after the 23 March first round’s poor results. Despite holding the Paris mayoralty, with the first woman ever to win that post, the results confirmed the tendencies noticed last week, namely an unusually high abstention level, a Front …

Portrayed as a directionless muddler in the British press, François Hollande has achieved more in two years than he is given credit for, say Roger Liddle and Renaud Thillaye François Hollande has aroused all kinds of feelings within Labour’s ranks over the last two years. From early indifference, the French president managed to spark curiosity …

At a glance, Labour’s road to a majority in 2015 seems both long and steep. We stand today almost four years on from one of our worst defeats since the end of the second world war, having won 258 seats and just 29 per cent of the vote, barely beating the consummate disaster of the …

With all the hype over François Hollande’s presidential race, you might be forgiven for suffering a dose of French election fatigue. But on Sunday the first round of parliamentary elections put the new president and his project to a crucial test. Their outcome will determine whether Hollande has the parliamentary majority required to get his …

The full National Executive Committee met on 29 May. It was a long meeting (four hours) with a lot of serious deliberation but no fireworks. Chair Michael Cashman welcomed Sadiq Khan who has replaced Peter Hain as a shadow ministerial representative on the NEC following Peter’s retirement from the frontbench. He announced that Tom Watson …

The return of former French prime minister Laurent Fabius to serve as François Hollande’s foreign minister has got the French buzzing with gossip over their copies of Le Monde. Not his vision for the European Union, of course, but the revelation that he had a ‘brief but passionate’ affair with Carla Bruni. A source within …

‘To resist is to win!’ That was the rallying cry that Dr Juan Negrin, the socialist prime minister who led the insurgency against Franco’s coup, used to inspire the forces of Spanish democracy in their last stand against the nationalists. It could – almost – have been the call given out by the left as …